(Photo by Torben Bühl)

“Lunar port, this is Star Stream J-7-1-E on approach,” Lyon said over the comm.

“We see you Star Stream, continue on your current course to landing bay 3-1-9,” came the reply. It was spoken fairly quickly and with the tone of someone used to giving out near identical instructions over and over throughout the day. “Be advised that all inbound ships and passengers will be searched. Expect a waiting period of about two hours before you will be allowed to leave the port.”

“Understood,” Lyon said and the comm went silent.

“They didn’t say how we’d be searched or where to go once we landed,” Chester noted.

“Means we’ll have a welcoming party,” Lyon said. “Anywhere between five and twenty security personnel.”

“And how far is our landing bay from the exit?” Chester asked.

Lyon turned to Jezah who was the only one among them who’d ever been to the lunar port.

“Honestly I don’t know” she shrugged. “I’ve only been there once and I didn’t memorize the entire layout when I passed through.”

That made sense. There were places within the imperial palace that Chester had visited but couldn’t draw a map that would be of much use.

“We’ll just play it by ear,” Chester told them all. “Don’t fight until we have to. If we keep quiet we might be able to get a decent way through before they figure out that we’re the one’s they’re looking for.”

It was a weak hope. Most likely they’d step out of the ship, get scanned and identified right away, as well as have their weapons and body armor noticed resulting in an immediate firefight.

“Sit back Chester,” Lyon said, “We’re about to begin the retro thrust.”

Chester obeyed and soon they began to decelerate, the ship vibrating from the firing thrusters and making Chester feel like he was being pushed down into his reclined seat. The noise was enough that none of them bothered trying to talk while Lyon piloted the ship down to the surface. All the while, Chester’s heart was pounding in his chest. It was just like all those years before when, as a child, he and his mother knew they were about to enter a war zone.

“Just keep focused on what’s around you,” she used to say. “And why do we keep moving until we’re in a safe zone?”

“Because a moving target is harder to hit,” Chester mouthed the words as the ship touched down and the engines shut off.

The next few minutes were taken up with everyone getting out of their seats and getting their backpacks and other belongings. Chester felt bulky with the armor on beneath his clothing but it was more of a comfort to him than anything else. His rifle, on the other hand, was an unwanted weight, concealed just inside the long coat that had been tailored specifically to hold the weapon.

It seemed to take forever to get everyone down to the exit door but once they were there time seemed to begin to move too fast for Chester. The door opened and suddenly they were all out of the ship. Security was there giving out instructions but, try as he might, Chester couldn’t concentrate on anything they were saying. Fortunately, Jezah and the others seemed to be cognizant enough to keep their group moving.

Where are the scanners? Chester wondered as he finally got his mind to slow down and take in his surroundings. Security was barely checking them as they were shepherded along, out of the landing bay and towards what looked like a series of smaller rooms.

“Those rooms look like they’re reinforced,” Lyon said over the neural connection. “If we get put in there, it won’t be easy to get back out.”

“The exit’s in the same direction, though,” Jezah pointed out. “Let’s see how close we can get.”

“Alright, everyone,” the security officer that was leading them said, stopping a short distance away from the rooms Chester had spotted. “I need you all to leave your personal belongings here, in this area we’ve outlined. You will then be taken to be scanned in one of the processing rooms. There is a bit of a wait, so don’t worry if it seems to be taking a while for us to get to you. I assure you we are moving as quickly as we can. There is food and water as well as some other basic amenities in each room to keep you as comfortable as possible while you wait. Thank you.”

He stood there, waiting, a halfhearted smile on his tired face. Chester wondered how many other ships they’d had to process already. With how restricted the Solar King kept information in the solar system, Chester wondered if these security officers even knew why they were doing these checks.

“Um, if you’d please leave your belongings here,” the security officer said again, his smile slipping a bit.

Chester realized they’d all been standing there, waiting for Chester to issue their next command. No one had attacked them yet, but they weren’t about to just leave their weapons behind.

“Right, sorry” Chester made H’lay say, putting a hand to her head and giving the security officer a tired look. “We’ve just been through quite a bit, you know, with the port getting blown up.”

The security officer hesitated.

“I’m sorry, did you say it was blown up?”

“Didn’t they tell you?” H’lay asked. “We weren’t even meaning to end up here, but the transit system was being hit. We got off at the port just in time, but then the port began to explode as well. The only thing we could do was run for the nearest ship.”

While H’lay spoke, more and more of the security officers began to gather around. It was obvious they hadn’t been told anything and human curiosity was a powerful thing. Chester had H’lay put down her things. She wasn’t carrying any weapons anyway, and begin to make her way towards the holding room. The dozen or so security officers followed her.

There were still other security forces in sight, but most of them were a good ways away and dealing with passengers from other ships.

“Leave what you can,” Chester told them all, shifting his attention away from H’lay for only a moment.

They needed to at least try to keep up appearances while they were out in the open. If someone looked over and saw an empty space where there should be bags and such it would be too suspicious. Instead, they left the bags of clothes and innocuous belongings and hid as best they could the ones filled with explosives and ammunition.

“That’s how we ended up here,” H’lay finished as they reached the room, but Chester did not have her enter it.

A few of the security officers shook their heads, others swore under their breath.

“You think this is all connected to that weird broadcast by the Solar King?” one of them asked.

“As much as I hate to say it,” H’lay replied, “I’m not certain that was the Solar King. I met with him right before that announcement went out and it was as though he were someone completely different.”

“You met with the Solar King?”

Chester hadn’t meant to go that far, but he couldn’t go back on that now.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but yes. I work in nanotechnology for the his Golden Eminence.”

Most of them looked impressed by this, though a few were beginning to look suspicious.

“Alright,” one of the suspicious ones said, “thank you for the information but you need to go into the processing room now.

Chester had H’lay step to the side of the door and then let her revert to her muted self. Then, the rest of his drones stepped up, revealing their weapons just enough for these officers to see but not enough for anyone else looking their way to notice that anything was wrong.

“Step inside, please,” Jezah said with a small flick of her gun.

The officers stood, frozen and caught off guard. A few moved their hands a couple inches towards their own weapons but then thought better of it.

“We can’t go in there,” the lead officer finally said.

“Why not?” Jezah asked.

“It’s a death box.”

Chester hadn’t heard of anyone using those in decades, though he was intimately familiar with their technology since it was the same as the bio-electric dampeners he used in his lab, just on a much larger scale. During the war, death boxes would be set up along transit routes, killing anyone who passed through.

“Are you killing everyone who’s come here?” Chester asked.

“Yes. That’s our orders.”

It was brutally efficient and meant Dawnstar didn’t have to sort through anyone. Even someone as important as H’lay could be replaced without too much of a problem.

“There’s what, fifty of you running security here?” Jezah asked.

“About that,” replied the officer.

“And how’re things on the moon? People like you here?”

“It’s not the worst posting in the solar system,” the officer said, “but it’s not one people volunteer to be assigned to.”

Chester took control of Jezah as he checked what she was about to say to the officers, something along the lines of ‘then you deserve what you’re about to get’ and then open fire on them. Instead, he had her lower her gun a few inches and give the men and women an understanding look.

“We aren’t here to cause trouble,” Jezah told them, “and I’m sure you don’t want to deal with any trouble. So get us to the colony and that’ll be the end of it as far as any of you are concerned.”

“Right,” scoffed one of them. “We let you go today and tomorrow you’ll just go and blow a hole in the wall and suck us out into space.”

“The moon’s not a target,” Jezah said. “The Solar King’s already harsh enough to you all. You might as well live in the fringe. But all we want is to fade away. No fighting. No problems. All we want is…peace. Actual, honest, peace.”

Jezah fought Chester on that last part but he managed to make it still sound natural.

As far as the security officers were concerned, about half of them looked convinced, a quarter of them looked uncertain, and the last quarter looked ready to fight.

“Listen,” Chester said, “if it comes to a fight, we’ll probably lose. You outnumber us, you’ve got better equipment. But you, right here with us, you will all die. The colony will hear about the fighting, and then about the people killed in the death boxes, and it’s weeks if not months before any reinforcements will be coming so…even if you manage to survive our attack, you won’t live much longer beyond that.”

“What’s to keep you from telling the colony about what’s been going on here?”

“We do that, we have civil war on the moon all over again. We want off the moon, not stranded on it. Please, just let us go and that’ll be the last you ever hear or see from us.”

Three-quarters of the security officers were convinced now but there was still that final quarter holding out. They were the true believers, the ones who would die for the Solar King no matter what.

“We’ll have to deal with those ones,” Jezah told Chester over their neural connection. “You’ll never convince them to let us go.”

“What do we–

The ship they’d arrived on exploded behind them. It was far enough away that they weren’t hurt or thrown to the ground, but it was enough to make many of them drop to the ground and cover their heads. Jezah, however, moved at the same time as the ship exploded, grabbing officers and shoving them through the door into the room where they immediately collapsed. She then turned and shot the remaining security officers.

“Let’s go!” Jezah shouted and in a moment they were all back up on their feet.

Chester was shaking but as they hurried along the corridor. Fuel tanks in the landing bay caught fire and the heat from the fire was almost unbearable.

“Fire doors are closing!” One of Chester’s drones shouted.

Sure enough, he could see the heavy doors moving to close off the port from the rest of the colony to keep their oxygen from being used up in the fire.

“We can make it,” Jezah said but there was no certainty in her voice.

All of them ran as fast as they could. The doors didn’t close quickly, but there was no stopping them. They would crush anything that got put in their way.

It was only as Chester came to realize that he would make it that he remembered he’d left H’lay behind. She was still standing beside the door into the death box. He couldn’t make her run while still keeping himself moving. How he’d ever managed it before when the space port was exploding was beyond him.

“Sorry, H’lay,” he said and left it at that. He couldn’t even have her move further away from the fires. If she survived, then he’d deal with that later.

As he crossed over the threshold to the other side of the fire doors he paused to catch his breath. He was one of the first to have made it through and he waited for the drones to catch up. They could all make it. The fire doors were slow, thankfully.

As Jezah came running up, however, Chester raised his rifle a fired off a single shot. Jezah’s head snapped back and a look of shock was frozen on her face. Their neural connection came to an abrupt end as she hit the ground, tumbling as her momentum carried her a short ways further down the hall. He’d timed the shot so that Jezah landed with her head resting on the caution strips showing where the fire doors would close. That would disguise the bullet wound well enough.

“I can’t say I’m sorry to see you gone,” Chester said to her as he stowed the rifle away. “You were smart and helpful, but too rebellious.”

With that Chester and his group hurried away, acting like frightened nobodies as they fled into the gathering crowd of lunar colonists.